September Fair by Jess Lourey Read Free Book Online

her first Communion. I used to comb her hair with it before she went to bed. A hundred strokes on each section.” Her voice was eerily detached.
    “I’m sorry,” I croaked, feeling her pain despite my best efforts. I knew that level of agony, that bottomless falling, the elevator plummeting to an end that never comes. I had spent part of my childhood and all of my teen years wishing my dad out of my life, and then when he did disappear in a screeching crash of metal, I felt as lonely as an abandoned cardboard box. The scariest part was not the grief but the emptiness left in its wake. I wanted to somehow comfort her, but I was afraid to touch her. She trembled with sadness. It crawled on her skin like bugs, parted her hair, leaked out her ears.
    Guilt drove me, though, and I stepped to her and tentatively patted her shoulder. She turned, fell into my arms and sobbed, her disconnection cracking. “She’s dead! My beautiful baby. How could this happen? Why her? Why can’t anyone tell me what happened?”
    The uniformed officers shifted their feet uncomfortably behind us. They both looked fresh-scrubbed, maybe five years younger than my thirty. One of them hadn’t been shaving long.
    “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Pederson,” I said. “Do you have someone at the fair with you? You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”
    She clung to me. “My husband is on his way from home. You’ll help me, won’t you, Mira? You’ll help me find out what happened to my baby. Won’t you?” She pulled back and locked eyes with me. Her expression was etched with a wild fierceness, leaving me only one answer.
    “Of course I will.”
    “Promise me. Promise me you’ll find out what happened to my little girl.”
    Those were the words people spoke when unimaginable pain befalls them. They’re crazy words, a kettle hot to bursting letting off necessary steam. Most listeners would write them off to extreme grief. Me, the prisoner of guilt, tattooed them to my heart. “I promise.” And with those two words, my personal vow to avoid all future murder investigations shattered like a mirror.
    She let me go and cradled the hairbrush as if it were an infant. “My sweet baby. My poor, poor baby.” With the help of the police officers and the staid but keen-eyed woman I guessed was the Milkfed Mary chaperone, Mrs. Pederson made her way around the dorm, pointing out her daughter’s duffel bag and gowns. Their location and contents were photographed, as was the entire room, from every angle. Mrs. Pederson wasn’t allowed to remove any of her daughter’s belongings. Rather, the police officers collected them with their gloved hands and carried them out, even gently peeling her daughter’s brush from Carlotta’s hands before leading the way down the stairs.
    The three of us followed, me with a hand on the shaky Mrs. Pederson. The chaperone trailed at a distance. She had an icy demeanor, but inside she must have felt terrible. Talk about a profoundly bad job looking after someone. “Keep your charges alive” must be the bare minimum requirement on her contract, and this woman had blown it. I couldn’t imagine it was her fault, but that was probably empty solace.
    The police officers waited for us at the bottom of the stairs. “Mrs. Pederson, we need to go to the station now.”
    “I’ll go with,” I said. In for a penny, in for pound.
    “I’m sorry. You can’t ride in the police car.”
    I stopped. That meant unhooking Ron’s pick-up truck, my immediate means of transportation, from the Airstream, and I had no idea how to do it. I could figure it out, though, even if it meant reasoning with a crowbar. “Can you give me directions?”
    Mrs. Pederson shook her head. “It’s okay, Mira. Gary is meeting me there. You’ve met my husband? He’ll take care of me.”
    “Is there anything I can do?”
    She squeezed my arm. The fervor that had struck her earlier had dissipated. “Pray for me, Mira. Pray for me and my girl’s